Vietnam Part 2

I arrived back in Hanoi at around 4:30am after taking an overnight train back from Sapa. They picked me up and brought me to the hostel, but I had to wait until 6:00 for the desk to open. When it did, I could check my bag there until I was able to check in at 11:00. I took the morning to explore the city. In the center of Hanoi there is a small lake, which is really interesting to walk/run around in the morning. Everyone heads out there to get there exercise in. There are some groups doing tai chi, yoga, and dance aerobics. There is one spot on the lake that has different types of dancing throughout the day. One time I went by and everyone was doing some Latin partner dancing, and later when I went by they were doing ballet. There is a small island in the middle of the lake that is some sort of temple, that has this picturesque red bridge that goes out to it. I wish I would have been able to find a time with no one on the bridge to take a good picture.

On a Saturday morning when I went around the lake, there were at least a dozen couples taking their wedding photos. There several interesting statues and sculptures around the city. My favorite by far was this one of the world. I laughed out loud the first time I saw it. I guess Vietnam has big plans to take over the world!
That first day I went to the museum of ethnology. There are a ridiculous number of tribes or groups of different people throughout Vietnam. I guess it makes sense because there are so many regions and the country is so long and spread out. I guess even when I was trekking we would be in one village, and 15 minutes later when we arrived in the next village they had a different native language! The museum was interesting. Outside they had different buildings that represented the different peoples. The weirdest thing was this structure that had statues of pregnant women and people having sex all around it. I was quite shocked, especially since there were hundreds of school children running around them. I guess they represented prosperity and fertility, but it still seemed quite odd and inappropriate for the kids to be climbing on…

I spent the entire next day making a full circle around the whole city, catching museums, temples and parks along the way. The temples were laden with red and gold, all with incense burning and piles of fruits and flowers everywhere. I went to a Prison Museum, which was a functioning prison for both Vietnamese nationals who opposed communism and captured American pilots during the war. It was referred to as the “Hanoi Hilton.” Walking through it was kind of creepy, as they still had the stockades and the guillotine.
That evening I went to the “night market.” For 3-4 hours every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, one street is completely shut down and venders come in. It seemed like everyone in Hanoi came out to it. Open air markets are my favorite because they aren’t touristy at all. They didn’t have any of the normal things that all the souvenir shops have, and I didn’t see many tourists.
My final day in Hanoi I went to see Ho Chi Mihn’s mausoleum. I figured he was a pretty important person in their history, and I had never seen a preserved dead embalmed guy before, so I should probably go to see. There is a huge complex that has Ho Chi Mihn’s palace, mausoleum, a museum, temple and large park in it. It is only open in the mornings, and I went on a Saturday so it was really crowded. There was a huge line to get into the complex because you had to go through security. That took about a half hour, then you had to get in another line to get into the mausoleum, which was at least 500 meters long. You weren’t allowed to bring a camera, or any liquids in. As you started getting closer to the entrance, there were guards everywhere. You had to keep your hands down at your side, stay in two single file lines, you couldn’t talk, and they kept pushing us to keep moving faster. In the room with his body alone there were 8 armed guards. I don’t quite get the whole preserving someone’s body for eternity thing. It really kind of creeped me out. I get that he was really influential to the country, but I much prefer the monuments and buildings that we build in America
to honor our founders.
The last thing I saw in Hanoi was the Vietnamese water puppets. I had heard of them, but didn’t really know what they were. It was in a small theater that held only a few hundred people. The stage was a giant pool. All of the puppeteers were behind a bamboo curtain, and somehow they controlled all of the puppets from back there. I spent most of the time trying to figure out how the heck they worked. The whole thing was in Vietnamese, but there was an English program that told you the basics about each scene.
The next morning I caught my flight back to Korea. I wish I had had time to travel south and get down to Ho Chi Minh City, but I guess that will have to wait for another trip.

Oh, here are a couple more pictures that represent Vietnam in my mind. First is a very typical street. When you want to cross, you just step out into the middle of this mess and start walking. I got used to it after a while. At first I would just stand there waiting for some sort of a lull, but an old lady grabbed me and showed me how to do it. As long as you walk slowly, everyone adjusts to go around you. I have a crazy video that I wish I could show you that I took of walking across the street with bikes, cars and busses zooming by within a foot of me. Yikes!

This picture of the buildings was one of the first things that I saw when I was going from the airport into town. I was really confused as to why they had such tall skinny buildings. As I got closer to town, there were a lot more of them squished together and I understood more. When the street is full of them it looks normal. It’s just where it’s not built up as much that they look silly standing all by themselves.
Now I have 2 months left of school before I get to go home for the summer! I’m really excited about being able to be home for such a long time.

Vietnam Part 1

Over spring break I took a trip to Vietnam. Though I went by myself, I met a lot of people from the hostel that I stayed at, and from the tours I did. I got into the airport in Hanoi around midnight. The only way to get into the city that late is by taxi, so I had decided to stay
there until the morning when the shuttles started running again. I found some couches in a corner along with a group of three other people from France. We happened to be right next to a little snack bar, and had to listen to the rats rustling and squealing all night long. Most of the lights in the airport were off between 1:00 and 5:00, so it was relatively easy to sleep. I wasn’t
able to find the shuttle busses in the morning, and ended up being directed over to the city busses. I got on this bus, not really knowing where it was going or where I had to get off. It was terrifying, but that is where they had told me to go. I ended up having to get off when we were near the city and get a cab the rest of the way so I could get to the hostel in time to leave for my first tour.

I spent my first two days on a boat in Halong Bay, which is absolutely gorgeous. The bay is about 1500 square kilometers, and has about 2000 little islets. I was on a small boat with about 18 people. We got to go swimming off of the boat, and kayaking that first afternoon. The water was quite cold, but it was lots of fun. We took kayaks to one of the small islands that had a cave in it that we got to explore. The evening on the boat was not quite as pleasant. I signed up for the boat through my hostel. At the time I didn’t know that this particular tour is known as the biggest party boat on the bay. Everyone started drinking as soon as we got on the boat, but the serious drinking games started at 8:30. Everyone participated so I couldn’t even go up to the deck by myself without feeling weird. I ended up just sitting and watching everyone make fools out of themselves until I had finally had enough and went to bed around 11.
The next morning one other girl and I convinced the crew to let us go swimming before breakfast. He wouldn’t put the ladder down for us, but there was a rope that we could climb
up. It was really cold at 6:30 in the morning, but it woke us up, and it was fun telling people that we had done it. The rest of that day was cruising back to the docking area, and driving back to Hanoi.

That night I took an overnight train out to Sapa, where I spent the next two days trekking to some of the villages. On the train, there were four beds in each cabin. There were two other young girls from Germany in my cabin. A few minutes later when an older Vietnamese man walked in the door his face just fell. The poor man was visibly upset to have to share the room with three younger girls.
There were four people in my trekking group. One was a young girl from Switzerland, and the other two were a little older and from California. Our guide was a 17 year old girl from one of
the near-by villages. As we started walking, a bunch of ladies started following and talking to us. They meet and walk with all of the tour groups, hoping that after a few hours they will be able to sell you something. At one of our stops, our guide got a big stick of sugarcane. She peeled the bark off and gave us each a piece. It was kind of like eating a sweet stick.

It was a pretty foggy day, but the mountains were beautiful. They were fully covered with terraced rice paddies. There were some places where there were at least 100 separate terraces from the bottom to the top of the mountain. I can’t even imagine how much time and work
went into creating those things.

That night we stayed in the home of a woman, her two kids and one grandkid. She had basically built a loft above the rest of her house for guests to stay in. It was kind of odd because most of the house was really traditional. Their living and sleeping area was all one room, the kitchen consisted of a large cooking fire place and a table to prepare food on. There wasn’t a sink or refrigerator or anything like that. However, they had added a modern bathroom to the side, which seemed completely out of place. Her bathroom, out in the middle of nowhere, was
cleaner than the one at the hotel we stopped at in the city!
The next day we just continued trekking. We stopped briefly at a waterfall, and also went by a village school. The kids were on their lunch break and there were no teachers in sight. Most of the kids had left, but some were playing in the school yard. Though the school was locked, I was able to seek inside some of the classrooms because there were a few broken windows. It reminded me of when I was in second grade and went to visit an old one-room schoolhouse. They had a chalkboard, desks, pencil and notebooks, but not much else. I get frustrated in my classroom because we don’t have sets of leveled readers, materials for science experiments, or math manipulatives. But compared to this I have it pretty good!

When we finished trekking that day I had a few hours to explore Sapa before I had to leave for my overnight train back to Hanoi. I went for a run around the city (eliciting quite a few strange looks) and went to the local market to explore. Actually, the fog moved in and soon it was
almost impossible to see where you were, so I spent the last hour or so just at the hotel waiting.

Well I'm quite sick of typing, and I'm sure that anyone who made it this far is quite sick of reading. I'll tell you more about my trip next week.

I only have about 9 weeks until I come home for the summer. Plus, I just found out that I get an extra week home in August! I am so excited!

I hope everyone has/had a great Easter. My volunteer group took the kids from the orphanage to Olympic park for an egg hunt/picnic/games, and we had a great time.

Love you all!

Marathon #2

This morning I ran my second marathon. The first one that I ran was really small, with maybe only a few thousand runners. This one was the Seoul International Marathon, and there were around 25,000 runners. It was quite a different experience, because I was actually running with people the whole time, and there were spectators cheering and groups playing instruments.

T

The marathon started on the North East side of Seoul near some of their palaces and old history stuff. After winding around, (and even passing my apartment) it ended in Olympic Stadium on the South East side of the city. (First and Second pictures, respectively)

I took this picture at the start just beacause I thought it was so funny. The people are standing in line to use the bathroom. Notice how the mens line is super long, and the womens line only has a few people in it. It's just the exact opposite of what usually happens.

The marathon culture here is absolutely crazy. I talked to a man at the beginning of the race who had run 235 marathons. This was his 100th marathon with the same pair of shoes! When I asked how many marathons he runs in a year, he said he did 56 last year. He also has a friend that did 108 last year! They rarely have marathons in the middle of the week, so he must have run every single Saturday and Sunday. (No, I never want to get anywhere near matching this.)

I am also baffled about the refreshments that they provide. Yeah, they have water and sports drinks, but there are a few things that just don't seem to fit. They always have coffee mix (coffee, cream and sugar, we call it "candy in a cup") before the race. The worst thing though is the chocopies that they have during the race. I consider chocopies to be the Korean equivelant to a ding-dong. It is two soft cookies with a marshmallow in between, coated in chocolate. I get a little sick just looking at the things as I run by. Plus, someone said they were really dry, so you would need lots of water afterwards.

This marathon went much better than my last. On my first one, I absolutely died at the end. I had to stop and walk multiple times in the last 6-7 kilometers. This time, my last 5k was actually a faster pace than my average for the whole thing! I finished in 3 hours, 31 minutes and 9 seconds. This was 8 minutes faster than before! Multiple times I found myself behind a man who had "Impossible is Nothing" written on the back of his shirt. I smiled everytime I saw it. I don't have any pictures of me because I didn't have anyone else with me. Plus, when you finished they rushed you out of the stadium, and I wasn't able to go back in after getting my bag. Hopefully there will be some pictures on the website within a few days.

Next up for me is my vacation to Vietnam. I leave next Saturday and will be there for a week. I'm super excited, but haven't had much time to think about it. Now that my marathon is out of the way I can finally focus all my attention on my trip!

Leeann: I love you so much, and hope everthing goes well when you get deployed. I'll be countin the days until you are back safely.

Love you all,

Stacie

I'm Back

Okay, so I do realize that it has been about 5 months since I have last posted anything here. For a long time I just plain didn't have anything interesting to post. Then it got to be such a long time that even though I did have something to write, I was too embarassed about waiting so long that I didn't do it. So here goes....

Since I last posted in October I have done a lot of things. I ran my first marathon, visited home, became an official member at my church, and started volunteering at a local orphanage.

I can't believe that there are only three months left in the school year. I know that time will go really fast because we have so many things left to do at school (2 assemblies, read-a-thon, book fair, international day, sports day, field trip and Spring concert, just to name a few). Recently we had our first ever Science Fair for the whole elementary school. I sure had a hard time figuring out what my first graders would be interesting and they would actually understand. We ended up doing projects about food decay. Each group did a different type of food. We put one set of each type of food in the classroom, and one in the refrigerator in the staff room. Pretty simple, right? I figured that it would at least be relevant and something that they could apply to their lives. I thought the whole thing was going pretty well until one child, after four weeks of working on this project asked me what a refrigerator is. Wow, I really failed on that one.

About 6 weeks ago I decided that I really needed to find something to do with people outside of work. I found a group on the website Meetup that was visiting an orphanage. I thought that would be a great thing to do, so I signed up and went. I didn't know that they had just started doing this, and there wasn't really any organization yet. On my first visit, the kids ran around the room for 3 hours, fighting over treats that volunteers had brought, screaming, climbing on tables, walking on the piano keyboard, etc... It was one of the craziest experience that I had with kids. There wasn't any staff from the orphanage in the room with us, and the volunteer organizer didn't really seem to care. Many of the volunteers were there for the first time and didn't feel like we had the authority to discipline these kids. Once I realized that this was just a start-up operation, things didn't seem so bad. We have things so much more organized now, with games, arts, music, and sports activities planned for each visit. The look on the kids' faces when we come is priceless, and when you see just how much love they need your heart can't help but melt.

Coming up, I've definately got some stuff to look forward to. The last week in March I will be on vacation in Vietnam!! Then it will be back to work, nose to the grindstone until the beginning of June, when I leave for a summer at home!

I love and miss everyone so much!